"Remember when you were a kid, and you saw the legendary TV musical version of Peter Pan, and Peter was striding around the stage declaring, 'I WON'T grow up!'? Remember what you thought, in your innocent, naïve, trusting childlike way? You thought: 'THAT'S not a little boy. That's obviously middle-aged actress Mary Martin making a fool of herself.'"

This is a role that, for whatever reason, is played by an actor of the opposite gender. Some common reasons for this involve a gender imbalance in the supply of actors:

Theater troupes may be all male, usually because the Moral Guardians have decreed that women should not go on The Wicked Stage; such troupes will use this trope by necessity.

Community and school theater companies frequently have more women than men. Many plays (especially older ones) have more male than female roles. Cross-casting is one possible solution, though Gender Flip or Acting for Two may also be used. Similarly, sketch comedy groups are frequently all male, so female roles are often handed to men; it helps that many culturesnote Especially the British find men dressed as women inherently funny.

Certain university drama groups only use male actors, a tradition that began as a necessity in the days when women could not be students. This tradition is rapidly declining.

If the role is to be a sufficiently young child, the actor's gender matters much less. In particular, infants are frequently used in film and television without regard to gender. (The parents are responsible for having to explain to their son why he was on national television wearing a pink dress and bows in his hair as a baby).

Other common reasons are varied:

In any kind of production with a lot of difficult singing, the roles of young boys are frequently played by women. Good boy sopranos can be tough to find, especially if you also need them to be able to act; they also have a very specific vocal timbre which may not be compatible with the production's overall aesthetic (e.g., in Opera). Not to mention if they are close enough to adolescence a boy's voice may change completely by surprise, overnight. Compare the high proportion of young boy characters in animation played by adult women.

Early opera also has a number of roles written for castrati— men who underwent castration (usually involuntarily) to prevent their voices from changing. Since this isn't done anymore, modern productions of such roles fall under this trope by necessity.

The director is making a political statement, e.g. about gender.

Transsexual and other gender variant characters are commonly played by actors who have the right body shape rather than the right gender, as there often isn't a more suitable actor available.

The role calls for a young-looking/undersized person, but due to Dawson Casting the body size might not be right. The inverse is sometimes true.

Very frequent when animals are used in films, especially if the species show little sexual dimorphism.

In the Victorian/Edwardian era, when decent women were not supposed to show their legs in public, Fanservice was one reason why actresses so often found themselves costumed as boys.

In Western theatre and opera, a male character intended to be played by a female performer is commonly referred to as a "breeches role" or "trouser role."

Love scenes involving these characters are a notorious source of Ho Yay.

Examples:

open/close all folders

Anime & Manga

Several of the productions from Kaleido Star feature females in male roles. Ana especially tends to play male characters.

In Ranma ½, Akane has been stuck playing Romeo in school plays because she was the only one athletic enough for the role. Finally, she gets a chance to play Juliet, but there's still a problem casting her love interest....

An in-universe example in K-On!, when the main characters' class puts on a production of Romeo and Juliet for their school festival. As it's an all-girls school, the male parts are played by girls.

In Wandering Son, the school holds a play where all the girls play the male parts and the guys play the female parts.

In the anime adaptation of D.N.Angel the school play is done with entirely male actors and an all-female production team. The excuse the ladies give for this decision is to respect Shakespeare and his all-male acting troupe; the real reason is that they want to see the male lead and his Ambiguously Gayrival, cast as the female and male leads respectively, share romantic scenes together.

In the Cardcaptor Sakura anime, there's an In-Universe example when the main character's class held a production of "Sleeping Beauty". Because the roles were hidden by a cover and required each member of the class to write their name in the blank slots, when the teacher removed the cover they discovered that - basically - Sakura had cast herself as the Prince, Syaoran as the Princess, and Takashi as the Queen - making for a slightly awkward production, especially for Sakura's brother Touya (who of course noticed this well enough). In a halfway example, Tomoyo was cast as the narrator, which is traditionally given to a male actor (but not strictly).

Also happens to Touya's class production of "Cinderella" in which he plays the title character and a girl in his class (who has a crush on him) plays the prince.

Happens In-Universe in Daa! Daa! Daa!, where the infant Ruu is cast as a baby princess in the main group's play. Keeping his gender concealed is no issue. Keeping his psychic powers concealed, on the other hand...

The Lord of the Rings required large numbers of competent equestrians as extras to play the Rohirrim and other mounted soldiers. The riding clubs of New Zealand and Australia were able to provide sufficient numbers of horses and riders... but a large number of these riders are women. Thus, many "men of the West" are actually women wearing fake beards.

In Jack and Jill, Adam Sandler plays both the main character and the character's sister.

Mr. Jacobi's son Ismael in Fanny and Alexander is played by a woman. There's no obvious reason for this, but since Ismael is a mentally disturbed character who appears to bring about someone's death just by thinking about it, it may be for general creepiness.

Alistair Sim as Miss Millicent Fritton in the original St. Trinian's series. Rupert Everett as Miss Camilla Fritton in the remake.

In Dark City, Mr. Sleep is a child with the male honorific "Mr.", however he is played in closeups by a girl, and in the long shots by her fraternal twin brother. Of course, the character doesn't have to be male - the strangers may not have paid any attention to gender.

In 1913 short The Evidence of the Film, the role of the messenger boy is played by an 11-year-old girl, probably to make the character look even younger, possibly because the girl in question (Marie Eline) was a famous child star of the day.

Many early kung fu movies featured women playing male characters. For example, Cheng Pei-Pei made her debut playing a male in the 1963 film The Lotus Lamp.

In live action footage of the witch from Snow Whiteand The Seven Dwarves the witch is played by Don Brodie and Moroni Olsen. This was done to give her a more aggresive masculine feel.

An in-universe example in Escape from New York, where male inmates perform in drag in a stage musical in Manhattan prison.

Literature

A Brother's Price has an all-female opera ensemble performing a play about the civil war, including a sad monologue by a man involved in said war. He is played by a woman. Not the usual lack of men in unpaid theatre - men simply have Gender Rarity Value.

Similarly, Lady Sibyl mentions in The Fifth Elephant that she won much acclaim playing the romantic lead in a dwarfish opera at her school. This is somewhat of a double example, as a) it was an all girls school, and b) dwarfs are remarkably ambiguous about their biological sex. On the other hand, it might not be this trope at all, considering that it is not known what the sexes of the dwarves involved were. Their gender, on the other hand, was "dwarf", as they're a one-gender race by tradition.

Jack Aubrey of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series proudly mentions having played Ophelia—or, at least, one-third of Ophelia—as a midshipman. It was a shipboard production so they naturally didn't have any women; of the midshipmen, one was considered pretty enough to be Ophelia, another had an appropriately-pitched speaking voice, and Jack could carry a tune.

Live Action TV

Sophie of Leverage plays Willie Loman in Death of a Salesman; she's so Giftedly Bad that Nate doesn't realize that she's playing him as a man, leading to a particularly cringeworthy Compliment Backfire.

Lassie was usually played by a male dog, as the males of "her" breed have a longer, more luxurious "summer coat" than the females.

The aliens in the first Star Trek pilot were played by women, but had male voices. This has been repeated in a few of the spin-offs as well.

Full House inverted that, with Rebecca having played Romeo at an all-girls school.

Home Improvement played with this in that it wasn't the joke itself, but rather just an excuse for Jill and Wilson (who both had experience playing Juliet) to fight over who would help Randy practice the "Romeo" role.

Happens all the time in Monty Python's Flying Circus, because the troupe is all male, but also played for comedy. They do have access to real actresses, such as Carol Cleveland, when they need to have an actual woman (though one sketch had Cleveland playing a male explorer).

Kids in the Hall, another all-male troupe, does this also. However, it should be noted that they do not play the crossdressing for comedy. They state that they try to play the women as real as possible and let the humor come from the writing.

A recent Taiwanese game show modelled after Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader gets slightly derailed when one of the schoolboys goes into an extended rant about being cast as Cinderella for a school play. It made it into broadcast.

Saturday Night Live, of course, is a comedy troupe with both men and women. There have been both male cast members playing female characters (such as Dana Carvey's "Church Lady" character) and female cast members playing male characters (such as Rachel Dratch playing Harry Potter and Amy Poehler playing Kim Jong Il).

Arrested Development has a convoluted example when George Michael tries out for Much Ado About Nothing to get closer to Maeby; she ends up playing Beatrice, and he ends up understudy to STEVE HOLT's Benedick. Then Tobias ends up directing the play, and when Maeby quits, Tobias suggests that he will play Beatrice. By the end of the episode, Maeby and STEVE HOLT are still playing Benedick and Beatrice, only each one is playing the other gender.

Butch Lesbian "Walter" from German series Hinter Gittern - der Frauenknast (Behind bars - the women's prison) has a twin brother Andreas, played by the same actress, who's apparently indistinguishable from her without his beard. Which they used in one episode to change roles, allowing her to escape and him to get closer to several female prisoners.

The classic Israeli children television show At Fistuk’s featured a puppet named Rega‘ that turned into a boy... played by an adult woman. It’s as jarring as it sounds, even for preschoolers.

French and Saunders has a genderflipped example of the all-male comedy troupes; they do have two male comics on hand if required, but obviously the title duo has to play the main characters, even if they're doing a parody of The Phantom Menace.

Friends had Chandler's father (who is either a transvestite or transexual; the show was never clear) played by Kathleen Turner (voice of Jessica Rabbit).

Doctor Who occasionally has female or male aliens and robots played by actors of the opposite gender, but are often in full-body suits making it easier to get away with. Examples include Daz Parker as the Wooden Cyberman in The Time of The Doctor or Paul Kasey and Alan Ruscoe as the Susannah Constantine and Trinny Woodall androids in Bad Wolf.

Averted in Orange Is The New Black: male-to-female transsexual inmate Sophia is played by Laverne Cox, who is transsexual in real life. (In flashbacks taking place before her transition, Sophia is played by Cox's twin brother.)

Israeli satire show Eretz Nehederet had Tal Friedmann, a man, play women regularly, to the point that Orna Banay, one of the two actresses on that show left in frustration over him getting all the good roles for women. Ironically, Banay rose to fame partially by playing a man and briefly playing one on Eretz Nehederet herself.

Another Israeli satire show, Nikuy Rosh, did this on occasion, featuring both men playing women and women playing men.

Gilmore Girls has an In-Universe example. Paris plays Romeo to Rory's Juliet for a class project after the boy who was supposed to be playing Romeo gets expelled at the last minute. Dean is... intrigued.

Dean: So, did you and Paris actually kiss, or was it, like, a stage thing? Rory: A lady never kisses and tells.

Positive K voiced both the Hopeless Suitor and (thanks to pitch-shifting software) the target of his misguided affections in "I Got A Man".

Opera & Theatrical Productions

Ancient Greek plays were performed entirely by men. Indeed, whether women were allowed to even watch plays is a matter of debate.

All traditional kabuki theatre, due to a 1629 ban on female actors. This effectively created an entire industry of Attractive Bent-Gender "actresses" (see The Other Wiki on onnagatta). Note that when Kabuki first appeared in the early 1600s it was female only, and had females playing male roles. Either way, it's an example.

Noh theater used male actors in all roles from the beginning. A few females have begun to act in Noh in recent years, but even today it's most common to find an all-male cast.

William Shakespeare wrote all of his plays for all-male companies; thus all of his female roles are intended to follow this trope. Most modern productions ignore this entirely. This is presumably why there are so many plays in which a female character has to pass as male to get something done or to make a particular point. Some modern companies, for example the Los Angeles Women's Shakespeare Company, perform with entirely female casts to balance the scales of karma. Edward Hall's Propeller company, however, still goes the all-male route.

Subverted by Shakespeare's contemporary Ben Jonson's play Epicoene. The title character is played by a boy, but presented as a woman for the whole play- until the characters learn otherwise. That is, Epicoene in the world of the play really is a boy, but only the protagonist knows this until the end. Awkwardness ensues.

Numerous ballet productions in 19th-century Europe had the male roles be played by crossdressing women, for two reasons: firstly, due to changing ideas about gender, ballet was viewed as being too feminine for men to participate in, leading to a shortage of male dancers, and secondly, the male audience-members of the time really dug the Les Yay. Contrariwise, Mother Ginger in The Nutcracker and Widow Simone in La Fille Mal Gardee are traditionally danced by men.

And a great deal of other pages and young boys: Tebaldo in Don Carlo, Oscar in Un ballo in maschera, Smeton in Donizetti's Anna Bolena, Siebel in Faust, Stefano in Romeo et Juliette, Urbain in Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots, etc.

Octavian of Richard Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier is a young man, who at one point disguises himself as a woman; his part is played by female singers.

The title role is traditionally played by a woman onstage. The only male actor to have played Peter Pan on Broadway is Jack Noseworthy, who understudied the role as part of Jerome Robbins' Broadway. (Peter Pan was played by a boy actor in the 2003 film.)

Curiously enough, J. M. Barrie himself wanted the role of Captain Hook to be played by the same actor as Mrs. Darling, rather than Mr. Darling.

The Disney adaptation was the first to have the titular character be portrayed by a male.

In Hairspray, Edna is always played by a man, the part having been originated by the 300-pound drag queen Divine. The Musical helps enforce this by writing Edna's song parts in the baritone range.

In stage versions of Chicago, the character of Mary Sunshine is usually played by a man in drag, whose gender is revealed as a plot surprise. The movie cast a woman in the part, probably because there was no way to keep the twist from being obvious.

In Avenue Q, Gary Coleman is usually played by a woman because it is difficult to find a small enough man with a high enough voice. Also, puppet characters may sometimes be performed by a human of the opposite gender as the person who performs a puppet isn't necessarily the one providing the voice, as each puppeteer voices at least two puppets. The trope also comes into effect (sort of) with puppets who are performed by more than one person. For example, Nicky is, most of the time, performed by a male (who provides the voice, controls the head and left head) and a female (who controls the right hand).

In American Idiot, one of the people that temporarily played St. Jimmy while Billie Joe Armstrong was away was Melissa Etheridge, whose performance was noted for being seductive and highlighting the androgynous nature of the character. Casting a woman as this role, which had previously been played by two men, also made sense, given the fact that St. Jimmy is actually an illusion of Johnny's psyche, and therefore doesn't technically have an actual gender.

The Japanese musical theatre troupe Takarazuka is an all-female troupe, and inevitably they play a lot of malecharacters. It's usual particular cast members who get the male roles, and they tend to get a large fan following usually mostly consisting of straight women.

In pantomime any middle-aged or older woman (the "pantomime dame") will be played by a man in drag. In addition the young male hero (the "principal boy") is traditionally played by a woman although it's not that uncommon for them to be played by a male instead.

Caryl Churchill's play Cloud 9 has lots of cross-gender (and cross-ethnic) casting in the first act, to emphasize the disconnect between the character's feelings and their outer show. And some in Act II for Rule of Funny.

Having Cathy (a small girl) played by a grown man in the second act also serves as a metaphor for colonialism, which is a major theme of the show: Cathy is immature and out of control, and because she is actually a full-grown man, her misbehaviour is more of a threat than her identity suggests. It's funny, but it's not quite Rule of Funny.

In some Chinese traditional opera troupes, there are no actresses, so all of the female roles are played by men. (Farewell My Concubine is the story of such a cross-dressing actor.)

Madame Butterfly has this as a plot point: a foreigner mistakes performer Song for a woman, which he uses to his advantage. The playbills of most productions try to hide the fact that the character is played by a male actor, so the reveal is shocking.

Kim's son Tam in Miss Saigon has been played by both boys and girls, as the primary requirements for the role are 1) look Asian, 2) be short enough to pass for two years old, and 3) do what the director tells you to.

The Sera Myu has many male characters played by women (Prince Demand, Blue Saphir, Hawk's Eye, Fisheye, Jedite, Kunzite) and one that goes the other way (Petz). The fact that Sailor MoonNaoko Takeuchi was a fan of Takarazuka Revue (and used it for inspiration for Sailors Uranus and Neptune) and many actress came from or went to the Revue probably helped as well.

The 2013 Sera Myu revival La Reconquista is now an all-female cast, with a former Takarazuka Revue actress playing Tuxedo Mask, the male lead.

Dolores Umbridge in the sequel, is played by Joe Walker. Dean is another crosscast role, played by the person who played Bellatrix in the first musical.

Crabbe in both musicals—which gets lampshaded.

Goyle: We hate nerds!

Crabbe: And girls!

Holy Musical B@man! has Lauren Lopez playing one of these roles again, this time as Commissioner Gordon and minor villains Calendar Man and Evil King Arthur. Meredith Stepien also plays the Riddler. Numerous roles are also crosscast in the last scene when the whole Justice League joins in with the last musical number.

The Witch in Hansel and Gretel (the Humperdinck opera) is often played by a tenor in drag, mainly for the laughs. It was originally a mezzo-soprano role. Hansel is a typical trouser role.

It is very common for the title character in The Nutcracker to be played by a woman. Because, ya know, the nutcracker jokes weren't easy enough already.

In the televised CBeebies 2010 panto, the old woman Twanky is played by a male and the young boy Aladdin by a female. Both fairly traditional, but it does mean that the grownups get to watch the Les Yay between Aladdin and Jasmine.

In many productions of A Christmas Carol, Tiny Tim is cast as a trouser role. The Spirit of Christmas Past was originally depicted as Ambiguous Gender, but is often portrayed as or at least played by a woman. Occasionally, even Christmas Present gets cross-cast or gender-flipped.

In Die Fledermaus, the part of Prince Orlofsky is almost always played by a woman.

Isolier in Le Comte Ory. Isolier is the Count's romantic rival, and is played by a mezzo.

90% of Rossini's heroic leads are trouser roles for contralto or mezzo-soprano: Tancredi in Tancredi, Falliero in Bianca e Falliero, Malcolm in La donna del lago, Arsace in Semiramide. Even his Othello was at one point sung by Maria Malibran.

Some Russian composers were fond of this as well: Vanya and Ratmir in Glinka's A Life for the Tsar and Ruslan and Lyudmila; the shepherd Lel in Rimsky-Korsakov's The Snow Maiden, the minstrel Nezhata in Sadko, the Page in The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh.

Charlotte Cushman became known for playing Romeo, with the role of Juliet in at least one production being played by her sister.

Traditionally, Mrs. Luce in Little Shop of Horrors is played by the actor who played Orin, who also plays many other minor roles.

The role of Edwin Drood in the musical version of The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Announced by the Chairman as being played by the "famous male impersonator, Miss Alice Nutting."

Several recent productions of King Lear have had the Fool played by an actress, sometimes using a puppet.

Cross-casting is a contractual obligation in The Mystery of Irma Vep. There are four male characters, four female characters, and two actors who each portray two female characters and two male characters. The licensing contract requires two male actors or two female actors.

Intiman Theatre's 2012 Setting Update of Romeo and Juliet had three of the male roles played by women, notably Sampson (Tsige "Ziggy" Tafesse), the Prince (Hannah V. Franklin), and the apothecary merchant (also Tsige Tafesse).

In L'Aiglon, by Edmond Rostand, the titular role (Napoleon Bonaparte's 20-year-old son) was created in 1900 by Sarah Bernhardt. Doubles as Dawson Casting since she was in her mid-fifties.

The 1998 Encores! production of Lil Abner had Marryin' Sam played by actress Lea DeLaria.

The part of Baba the Turk in The Rake's Progress was once played by John Ferrante.

The Cat in the Hat in Seussical has often been played by female performers, going back as far as Andrea Martin (of SCTV fame) in the Toronto workshop; Rosie O'Donnell and Cathy Rigby both stepped into the role during the unsuccessful Broadway run.

Max Landis' Wrestling Isn't Wrestling retells the first 20 years of Triple H's WWE career with a predominantly-female cast, headed by Chloe Dykstra as Triple H. Male wrestlers like Triple H, Shawn Michaels and the Undertaker are played by women, and the only featured female wrestler, Chyna, is played by a man (Sam Witwer). All other parts are played by their sex.

In a reference to Peter Pan, they find Aang (the lightly-build, hyperactive twelve-year-old), is played by a petite woman. While Aang (and the rest of the group) is disappointed with the entire portrayal of him, the casting choice is what confuses him the most.

In one episode of King of the Hill, Peggy mentions that she played Danny Zuko in the high school production of Grease.

In the Mickey Mouseshort "Mickey's Mellerdrammer" (which is about Mickey and the game performing in a play based on Uncle Tom's Cabin), Mickey himself not only plays the title role of Uncle Tom, but he also plays Topsy.

In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode where the protagonists put on a pageant for Hearth's Warming Eve, all the historical figures are portrayed by the (all-female) main cast. At least one role, Commander Hurricane, is heavily implied to have actually been a colt, not a mare. And any of the others could have been, even Prince/ess Platinum. This being a very old pageant and one that's performed all over at this time, there were probably male ponies somewhere playing all of the historically female roles as well.

In one episode of The Simpsons Marge is auditioning in a play based on A Streetcar Named Desire for the role of Blanche DuBois, and at the auditions learns that Ned Flanders is there as well. Flanders reveals that he's actually been in a play of Streetcar before, and the role he played was Blanche DuBois, adding "One of the benefits of going to an all-male acting school." In another episode, Martin Prince gets the role of Lizzie Borden for a school play.

In the cartoon adaption U.S. Acres, Wade's usually a victim of this in the fairy tale-themed episodes. This may be because, there's no one else around to fit this role to play The Ingenue and the only main female character, Lanolin, is more suited for characters like Mulan. Wade's most known example of this trope is in "Snow Wade and the 77 Dwarves."

TV Tropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy